I’ve been reading the human network and there is some fascinating things there. In Mark Pesce’s latest post, Hyperconnected Health he talks about his “cloud” — all the people he follows, and all the people that follow him on the various social networks and how it helps him make better decisions:
“My cloud extends my reach, my experience and my intelligence, making me much more effective as some sort of weird ‘colony individual’ than I could be on my own. I have no doubt that within a few years, as the tools improve, nearly every decision I make will be observed and improved upon by my cloud. Which is wonderful, incredible, and – to quote Tony Abbott – very confronting.”
He talks about a few specific incidents where he’s gotten some very useful and timely advice while traveling, and then notes that some industries have seen major shifts due to the ability for people to be hyper-connected. Specifically:
“There’s a direct correlation between the speed at which a motion picture bombs and the rise in the number of users of Twitter. It used to take a few days for word-of-mouth to kill a movie’s box office: now it takes a few minutes. As the first showing ends, friends text friends, people post to Twitter and Facebook, and the news spreads. After the second or third showing, the crowds have dropped off: word has gotten out that the film stinks. Where just a few years ago a film could coast for an entire weekend, now the Friday matinee has become a make-or-break affair. An opinion, multiplied by hundreds or thousands of connections, carries a lot of weight.”
3 days of movie sales down to one … all because we can get recommendations from each other that much faster. I wonder what other industries Twitter is altering?
I only have 167 followers on twitter (Mark has 6800), so I’m not sure that I qualify for the “hyper” prefix. But I’ve posted a few questions and gotten some select responses. Nothing big, and certainly nothing that has changed my daily use. I can see the potential if I were to expand my social graph.
So then.
I find the technology-enabled social connections interesting, but not yet vital. What concerns me is that what happens when they *become* vital?
I’ve read about kids getting (accidently) left out of birthday parties because the invite went out over SMS and they didn’t have a cell phone. It’s stupid, unintentional, and yet a real problem. Staying plugged in takes time, but it takes cash too. Cell phones have a hefty cash commitment. I guess what I’m wondering: will “hyper” connectivity (and all of it’s advantages) become a class differentiator? Will there be the hyper-connected-have’s and the hyper-connected-have-not’s? The latter of who will be doomed to spend too much money on bad movies the 2nd day of it’s release?
Mark says:
“We can choose to be entirely connected, or entirely disconnected. We can let the batteries run flat on our mobile, or simply turn it off and put it away. But there’s a price to be paid. Absence from connection incurs a cost. To be disconnected is to cede your ability to participate in the flow of affairs. Thus, the modern condition is a dilemma, where we balance the demands of our connectedness against the desire to be free from its constraints.”
[emphasis added]
I have no conclusions yet, just interest, and perhaps some questions. Hyperconnected Health was a good read.
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